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Sam Fender: People Watching
New album: The likeable, powerful tenor-voiced, 30-year-old singer-songwriter from North Shields has hit mainstream success, especially with his last LP, Seventeen Going Under (2021), and while this continues with a sometimes Springsteen-like style, there’s a lyrical melancholy colouring this third LP, on trappings of fame, music industry, and tales of tragedy within his northern working-class roots
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The Cure: Songs of a Lost World
New album: Powerful, moving and dark, on grief, loss and the passing of time, this milestone release by the British cult band of Robert Smith is their first LP of new songs for 16 years, but is worth the wait with its emotional depth and strength
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Elbow: Audio Vertigo
New album: The Bury-formed band of Guy Garvey, Craig Potter and co return with their 10th LP, one particularly marked by experimental styles, thunderous rhythms and adventurous sounds, sometimes reminiscent of Peter Gabriel
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Favourite LPs of 2023, Part 2.
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order …
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Part 1 selection of 2023 favourite albums
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 1, and Part 2 is also out here. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order. This is all about quality and innovation …
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Rolling Stones rock of ages: the diamond geezers return with polished retrospective of their career
New album: A rock dinosaurs’ indulgent dirge? Far from it. This first LP of new material by the veterans for 18 years, and perhaps their final one, goes with a bang – echoing some of their 70s rock, blues, and country infused pomp
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Feist’s sixth album, Multitudes
New album: A beautifully intricate, delicate, intelligent and innovative new LP by the Canadian singer-songwriter with among others, a theme the many selves we possess and present, now, in the past and future
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Lana Del Rey returns with her ninth album
New album: The queen of noir returns with her ninth LP – steeped in powerful, beautiful, piano-based numbers of melancholy and rich vocal harmonies, with rumination about dangerous love, religion and of course, death
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A gentle hit? Elbow’s Flying Dream 1
New album: Variously written by members isolated during lockdown, the Manchester band’s ninth LP is a study in gentle, minimalism, filled with beautiful lyrical images and tender moments after 2019’s angrier, edgier, proggy Giants of All Sizes
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Blue Banister’s is Lana Del Rey’s eighth studio album in 11 years
New album: The American singer-songwriter returns with her eighth LP and second LP of the year with further slow, cinematic piano-based numbers filled with her soaring voice and vivid, heartbreak stories and images
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Sam Fender’s second LP Seventeen Going Under
New album: Hugely popular, especially after his 2019 debut Hypersonic Missiles, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter from North Shields builds on this with further Springsteen-style huge choruses and sax-decorated melodies and Strokes turns, but now with edgier, more personal lyrics
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Kacey Musgraves: veiled truth
New album: The acclaimed Nashville star’s follow-up to 2018’s Golden Hour comes on the back of divorce from fellow musician Ruston Kelly, so it’s a bittersweet but at times beautiful cross between country, rock, pop and R&B
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Paul Weller’s Fat Pop is an album of catchy singles
Album review: Woking’s finest returns with his own lockdown LP after 2020’s acclaimed On Sunset, and this 16th solo LP is a fun bag bursting full of catchy melodies and fabulous toe-tapping pop tunes
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Ladies of the canyon … the cover of Lana Del Rey’s eighth album
Album review: Evoking big, wide landscapes with a slow, melancholic, wistful, nostalgic and semi-fictional narratives, the New York singer-songwriter’s eighth album is of uniform style and slow pace, but rich in powerfully strong melodies and memorable lines
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Hair today … new album releases in random formation
Latest albums include exquisite soul and gospel with the divine voice of Lianne La Havas and the mystery band Sault, plus mischief from Jarvis Cocker, The Pretenders roll back the years, the return of the (no longer Dixie) Chicks
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This week’s magic nine new albums
This week includes a mellow one from the modfather, innovative electronica from The Irrepressibles, gorgeous piano-based work by A.A. Williams and Hani Rani, African and Coldcut collective Kelekelta, and kickass pop-punks Dream Wife
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This week’s fabulous lineup of nine
The latest lineup includes female vocalists of rich original Nadine Shah and Becca Mancari, nonbinary electronica star Arca, wonderful poetry in a band from Simon Armitage, and frenetic work from Pottery and Bananagun
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This week’s selection in celebrity squares
A gentle and melancholy trend infuses this week’s selection, including Tim Burgess and Badly Drawn Boy, Woods, Eve Owen, Steve Earle’s memorial to coalminers, plus an eclectic The 1975, and pop electronica by Jessica Winter
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Halsey
A mixture of dark and light, hope and hopelessness decorate this week’s huge roundup of releases across many genres, including oddities and eccentricities, passions and playfulness from Emimen to Ivor Cutler, Halsey to Keeley Forsyth
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FKA twigs
The second part of this year’s LP favourites again includes several superb female artists. Also check out the first part published yesterday
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